A hacker breached Romania's National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI) and wiped the country's entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt. The attack, which became public on July 14, brought the Romania real-estate market to a standstill as official apps and websites remained offline for a week. Notaries cannot record transactions, and citizens cannot obtain proof of ownership. The attacker entered using valid credentials, mapped internal systems, and deleted both systems and backups. A day later, stolen data including employee credentials and network details appeared for sale on a hacking forum.

The breach was claimed by Byte To Breach, a known threat actor also linked to intrusions at Sweden's e-government portal and other agencies. Security firm KELA previously profiled the hacker, suggesting a location in Algeria. Following the ANCPI hack, researchers doxxed the operator as Zakaria Mahdjoub from Oran, Algeria. Officials have restored the agency website and announced a complete network rebuild from scratch, indicating an offline backup may exist.

Romania joins Poland, Slovakia, Greece, Morocco, Russia, and Ukraine as nations whose land registry agencies have been compromised in the past three years.